Wednesday, November 23, 2011

It seems that there is a little less magic in the world today, since we got the news of the death of Anne McCaffrey.Best known for her award-winning and bestselling Pern series, McCaffrey has said that her best novel was 1960’s The Ship Who Sang.

According to her publisher’s blog, McCaffrey, 85, died at her home in Ireland Monday “shortly after suffering a stroke.” Her health had been declining over the last few years, something the author reported on herself on her own blog. In December of 2009, she wrote that things had been difficult. “As for writing this year, sadly, that takes energy and I just don’t have as much of it as I’d like.” Fortunately for her fans, lacking the energy to embark on new projects herself, McCaffrey started a series of collaborations, notably with her son, Todd (Dragonriders of Pern) and award-winning author Elizabeth Ann Scarborough (Barque Cats).

McCaffrey’s first novel, Restoree, was published in 1967. Since then, she has written over 100 books. According to Locus, McCaffrey “was the first woman to win both the Hugo and the Nebula Awards, with Weyr Search (1968) and Dragonrider (1969) respectively. Pern novel The White Dragon (1978) was the first hardcover SF novel to make the New York Times bestseller list.

Earlier this year it was announced that the characters of Pern would finally be making it to the big screen. Back in April, Collider had this to say:

Screenwriter David Hayter (X2, Watchmen) has been tapped to write the screenplay for the adaptation of Anne McCaffrey’s sci-fi/fantasy series The Dragonriders of Pern. Hayter will adapt Dragonflight, which is the first in a series of novels that began in 1968 and continue to this day. Dragonflight centers on “an elite group of warriors who take to the skies on the backs of giant, fire-breathing, telepathic dragons to save the wondrously exotic planet of Pern from a terrifying airborne menace.”

So sad that, after many years of waiting for it to happen, McCaffrey won’t get to see her wonderful creatures take fight.

1 Comments:

I devoured everything she wrote. Or so I thought...you mentioned at least one I haven't read and now I have something to look forward to.

My learning disabled child was tricked into learning to read when I started a McCaffrey book and then stopped, saying to said daughter, "You have to read the rest yourself!" A life-long reader was born.